Killigrew's Trial
The Prisci Council is gathered at Cabot Estate. The big round table was purpose-built for the Ruling Council and its eleven Councilors, and it looks too big with only five people seated around it, though the excess chairs have been cleared away. Each of the remaining straight-backed wooden chairs is intricately carved with the symbol of one of the clans - impressive, though not actually that comfortable. Still, the discomfort keeps everyone alert. Establishing guilt or innocence is rarely a challenge in Kindred society, and certainly not one when the Sheriff is a Mekhet who has mastered the telepathic applications of Auspex. "Councilors," Aikiko begins, her quiet voice filling the large room like a whisper in a church. "Before you stands Zoe Killigrew, Defiant Savage Firebrand, who diablerised her sire, the Gangrel Crone Wisteria, and colluded with the Strix in its efforts to engineer the blood-plague. With your permission, Zoe's own memories will stand as all the evidence required for both actions and motives." Once that permission has been granted, the Sheriff brings her thoughts in harmony with each of the Prisci in turn, deftly depositing the memories she has harvested from Zoe Killigrew. The smell of blood is fresh and thick in the abandoned slaughterhouse where Zoe Killigrew has made her Haven. Aikiko is horrified as she comes into view to see a man bound to the wall by thick chains and sturdy, bloodstained cuffs, with the fledgling Gangrel stirring a handful of rose petals into a bowl of blood. Beneath the scent of fresh blood is older blood, and older still, mixed with the faint but unmistakable scent of fecal matter. More than one person has died here. '' ''"Maybe I need more tears," Zoe muses, sniffing at the mixture. "Seems to help." Aikiko clears her throat from over by the entrance. "Zoe? I'm sorry to interrupt your..." Research? Play? "What you're doing, but there are a few things I need to talk with you about. Wearing my Sheriff hat." Using a big spoon to stir the mixture, Zoe leans in and sniffs it again before nodding slightly to herself. "Research." And play, after a fashion. Setting the spoon down, she looks over and nods. "Sure. What do you need?" she asks, straightening and turning away from the table, heading down the narrow 'throat' of the round pen and moving to join the teensy Asian. "I was interrogating a certain lynchpin in this whole plot - the person from whom we became aware that the plague is a deliberate, targeted attack on Kindred," Aikiko begins. "When you came up. He said that while the Strix was possessing him, it came here to visit you. That you knew who and what it was, welcomed it, and talked about destroying the city and all the Kindred in it and dancing on their ashes. That you made love with it. I pulled the memory with Auspex. I saw it through his eyes. Since then, you've made several comments in Elysium about wanting to watch the city burn, or words to that effect. I wanted to offer you the chance to explain yourself before I arrest you." There's a pause and Zoe chuckles softly. "Oh, is that all?" She asks, then shrugs slightly. "If you saw the memories, then you already know the truth of the events. If you wish to know more, the easiest way would be for you to taste and know the beast I fight against. Explaining it is hard." she says, glancing at her hands and digging a stained cloth from her pocket to wipe the blood off of them with. "I also assumed that once known, the Strix would not be inclined to staying in the same body. My bad." She says, thinking. "That was when I had nothing. No -reason-. No desire to stay awake. Nothing to bind me to this world, and all I wanted was to slip to the next. Castle and Callum both forced me awake when the sleep came for me, the fuckers. Your ghoul, Timothy, gave me reasons again." "You didn't tell anyone you'd met with the Strix. That you'd talked with it about its plans, no matter how vague it may have been. You didn't tell anyone that you had a personal relationship with it beyond when it had possessed you. Why not? Any of those things could have been a clue toward anticipating its next step, or figuring out how to defeat it." Aikiko shakes her head, mystified. "I don't know if you were actually colluding with it, but you certainly withheld information that would have made a difference in the investigation." "Did you know I refused to feed for two weeks? Callum had to force blood down my throat because I had no desire to live. And when I was low on vitae, I lied to Castle and convinced him to feed from me. I made him drink me to torpor." Zoe says quietly. "I didn't expect to be alive for very long. I was half hoping that Saul would put me down. Spend a night and end me. And he didn't. And then Timothy brought me somethign precious. Then more precious things, and it reminded me of things. I don't remember. Isn't that funny? I can't remember anything from before I was ghouled by that fuck Pritchard, but it felt like -home- when I saw the things he brought me." "I know. He's extraordinary," Aikiko agrees quietly. "And I know you've been very unhappy for a very long time. But you've sat in Elysium within the last two weeks and said you want to see it all burn." She shifts her weight, tucking her hands behind her back. "What do you know about this blood plague? From Korda's memory, it sounded like you knew the Strix's plan. If you do know anything, you need to come forward with it now." "Not that I can remember. I fell to torpor twice during that span of time, Aikiko. I was lost to the hate of my beast, and that hate runs deep. And it runs fierce. And from it stems the desire to watch the city fall. It's why I argued for the virus to be destroyed. I'm afraid of the temptation it presents to me. You cannot understand the beast I have, spawned from the knives that Pritchard used on me, the neglect of Aaron..." her voice falters and her grimaces, looking down at her hands again. "... What I thought was his neglect." she corrects weakly, then shakes her head. "And the insanity that was serving Castle. I worry I have become the monster I was marked by." "And diablerizing your sire," Aikiko adds, the words falling like heavy, padded blocks. "You'll get the opportunity to explain that before Council, Zoe. I'm sure you had reasons. I can't even begin to imagine how your regnants must have twisted you... but you will stand trial for that." "Have you looked at me, Aikiko? Do I look like a diablerist?" Zoe asks, shaking her head and stretching her arms out, displaying all five-foot-one of her delicate, twiggy build. "Go on. Take a good look." she says softly. "I find it amusing, personally, that the council made such a big stink about forcing me to find a foster-sire, and they never followed through with it. I've always known I was insignificant, that just sealed the deal." "You found a foster-sire. You found three. They were fighting over you. Everyone wanted you." Aikiko presses her lips together, swallowing hard. She doesn't want to see what she expects to see. This, more than anything, is why she didn't want to be the Sheriff anymore. There's no way to brace herself for what she's about to feel, but she tries. For the members of the Council who haven't mastered this aspect of Auspex yet, the feeling will be unprecedented. For Aikiko to read Killigrew's very thoughts, access her memories, she must almost ''become ''the little Gangrel, mentally and emotionally. She must understand what it means to be Zoe Killigrew, and once there is no difference between herself and the other she can access Zoe's memories. The verbal mention of diablerie was enough to cue Zoe to think of it, allowing Aikiko to zero in on it as though she were flicking through the pages of a book to find a particular passage. '' ''"And look who I would have been stuck with? Ryuu-the-Missing, Callum-That-Cares-Not, and Casper. Come now." Zoe says softly, chiding. "My mentor's gone away. I'm surprised you people haven't noticed his absence, yet." She shies from the memory - not necessarily because she's afraid of what is in there, but because of her own death being revisited, that knee-jerk 'please don't make me'. She even whimpers a little. The memory starts with Zoe waking from blackness. She's lying on the floor, awoken by a pain-spasm cramp with the need to feed. A dark-haired woman stands above her, half-encased in a wall from which he struggles to free herself. Wisteria. Glutted like a tick on Zoe's blood, and all that precious vitae wasted again in her efforts to break free of a mystical barrier than neither her physical strength nor her magic seem able to impact. "... So hungry," Zoe mewls against her hands, bloody tears rolling down her wrists, doubled over faintly. That need drives her to the first thing within reach, long decades as a ghoul making the concept of feeding from a vampire even more natural than feeding from a human would be. Her fangs tear into Wisteria's skin, and the hunger becomes the hatred. That bitch -killed- her. It burns, it surges, the beast roaring, demanding ''more. Wisteria attempts to pull away, but she's encased in a wall with nowhere to go, and she's empty of vitae once more. Snarling, Zoe feeds, and feeds, knowing that she is drinking her sire's soul and glad of it, welcoming the sickening horror that instinct raises in her gut and embracing the monster it makes her. She tells herself that in death she's become freed of the bonds, freed of that crippling, low status as a ghoul and the necessity of always obeying the rules others set. No longer a thing to abuse or neglect and the beast howling in her chest. She drinks until there's nothing but ash on her tongue, and she knows the only rules that will ever bind her again are the ones she chooses, she accepts.'' Glutted on the feelings of -freedom- and -raging hatred-, she conceals the diablerie as best she can and staggers out into the world. Reborn from death with a beast stronger than she knows how to control. One seething with violence, hate, and a desire to tear down everyone that's ever hurt her. Shattered by reliving that memory five times over - Aikiko's reluctance to revisit that memory the reason this trial has taken so long to schedule - she sinks into a chair. For good or ill, it's out of her hands now. The Council will decide what is to be done now.